Hydrostatic axial piston machines are operated under widely varying operating conditions, wherein the liners must tolerate the loads occurring in the operating states so that the axial piston machine does not fail prematurely. For example, DE 10 2013 208 454 A1 or DE 1 703 403 each describe a hydrostatic axial piston machine in which the liners pressed into the cylinder bores are intact hollow cylinders without any recesses. Such intact liners withstand the loads occurring at high operating pressures and have no tendency to crack. At high operating pressures, the leakage through the gap between the liners and the displacement pistons moving to and fro in the liners is so high that the guide faces between the displacement pistons and the liners are well lubricated and the generated heat is dissipated well. If however the axial piston machine is running with a high rotation speed and at the same time the operating pressures are only low, there is a tendency towards adhesion between the liners and the displacement pistons and hence so-called piston seizure, since the leakage through the gap between the liner and the displacement piston is reduced, so that generated heat is not dissipated so well and the components heat to the point that their expansion is no longer negligible.
DE 10 157 248 A1 discloses a hydrostatic piston machine in which the liners pressed into the cylinder bores have an axially delimited, circumferential recess region in their outer half starting from their outer end face. In the known liners, called compensated liners, the recess region is formed as a circumferential groove which has a contour formed as a circle arc in an axial section passing through the axis of the liner. The groove is situated in a region in which the greatest forces occur between the displacement piston and the liner, and in which the liner is accordingly exposed to the greatest heat load. The circumferential groove creates a clearance between the liner and the wall of the cylinder bore, into which the liner can expand. Accordingly, liners with a recess can withstand operating states with high rotation speeds and low pressures. If however a hydrostatic axial piston machine with compensated liners is operated mainly at high operating pressures, there is a possibility that the liners will break prematurely.
Therefore, it is already known that a hydrostatic axial piston machine for a specific application in which primarily the one operating state occurs is equipped with intact liners, and a hydrostatic axial piston machine for another application case in which primarily the other operating state occurs is equipped with compensated liners. Such a procedure means additional cost in planning of a plant and additional cost in procurement, stockholding and provision of the different liners, and in assembly of the different variants of an axial piston machine. Also, there are many applications in which the one operation type does not occur significantly more often than the other operation type, but fulfilment of the requirements for both operation types would be of great advantage.